0000000000301225
AUTHOR
C. Fassoulas
Porites corals from Crete (Greece) open a window into Late Miocene (10Ma) seasonal and interannual climate variability
Variations in the biotic composition of marine shallow water carbonates document global climatic changes. However, a discontinuous stratigraphic record and uncertainties regarding the ages limit the significance of shallow water carbonates as palaeoclimatic archives on geological time-scales. Notwithstanding these deficits, the environmental information stored in the skeleton of reef biota is a unique source of information that resolves seasonal to interannual climate variability in geological time. Application of the method to corals from carbonate rocks is usually restricted to the past 130,000yr, because the aragonite skeleton undergoes rapid diagenetic alteration. Consequently, reconstr…
Late Miocene sea surface salinity variability and paleoclimate conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean inferred from coral aragonite δ18O
Abstract Coral skeletons are archives of chemical proxies which enable paleoenvironmental reconstructions to be made at subannual resolution. Stable oxygen isotope ( δ 18 O) ratios of these archives reflect sea surface temperature (SST) as well as the δ 18 O composition of ambient seawater. The δ 18 O seawater composition is not only controlled by global ice build-up, but river discharge and the hydrological balance of evaporation and precipitation, all influencing sea surface salinity (SSS), also play an important role in marginal seas. New sub-annually resolved coral δ 18 O data were measured and evaluated together with published data from reef coral communities of Late Miocene age from C…
Middle Miocene graben development in Crete and its possible relation to large-scale detachment faults in the southern Aegean
The linkage between the development of south-facing Cretan graben and large-scale detachment faulting in the southern Aegean is unknown. Widespread Serravallian deposits in the Ierapetra graben of Crete supply constraints to Middle Miocene graben development in the southern Aegean. The Ierapetra graben, and by inference the Cretan graben in general, were hitherto believed to have formed as a result of sinistral transpression during N–S shortening. We argue that the formation of the Cretan graben is due to N–S extension. The south-dipping, N–S-extending Kritsa normal fault served as the master fault controlling graben development in the Ierapetra graben. The Kritsa normal fault is either an …